The present invention relates to an electrophotographic copying machine and, more particularly, to a charge removing device for an electrophotographic copying machine.
An electrophotographic copying machine produces an electrostatic latent image on a photoreceptor by way of an optical system. The latent image corresponds to an image on a copy document such as a manuscript or book to be copied. A developing device is provided so that toner particles electrically adhere to the latent image, so that the latent image becomes visible as a toner image. The toner image is transferred onto a copy paper via a transfer charger.
Conventionally, the photoreceptor is uniformly charged and exposed selectively to electromagnetic radiation to form the electrostatic latent image. When a very thick book is to be copied, some portions of the surface of the book, in particular, the gutter margin of an opening page and the fore-edges of the opening page and the remaining pages may inevitably float from the surface of a document table because it is very difficult to uniformly contact all the surface of the book on the surface of the document table. The floating fore-edges are copied to be black or solid. The floating gutter margins are copied to be such an indefinite image that the copied image is not clear, totally.